Just a year ago now, Coinffeine was one of the Bitcoin startups selected to participate in the CoinSummit in London. It was the first major international event in which we presented our proposal for a distributed Bitcoin exchange. This was shortly after we became the worlds first company to be established with bitcoins. Months later we had the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley, being selected by the ICEX to participate in the first STC Immersionprogram. That trip coincided with the news that Bankinter invested in Coinffeine, becoming the first bank in the world to invest in a Bitcoin company. We returned to the United States, this time to New York, earlier this 2015. At that time Coinffeine was selected by the VentureOutNY to participate in its acceleration program. Days earlier, Coinffeine had organized a meetup in Madrid that launched the private testing of our Trial version. This week, just few days away from the release of our Beta in 70 countries, Coinffeine has once again been selected, along with four other Fintech startups, to participate in Finnovista Pitch Day, held in Madrid.

Alberto, our CEO, picked up the microphone once again to present Coinffeine to an audience of investors and financial industry professionals. And we will not deny that presenting at home and in Spanish, makes it all more real, closer and more unique. To be the first distributed P2P exchange that enables to buy and sell bitcoins is a milestone in the ecosystem. But not less important is the fact that Coinffeine is about to enter, from day one, in 70 countries. Our commitment to peer-to-peer technology was something highly valued in the event. It offers a replicable business model, and it makes an international expansion totally unknown in the Bitcoin industry a reality.

We understand these events as recognition of the work we do on a daily basis and a strong belief in our company. The direct contact with investors, mentors, personalities from the financial industry and other entrepreneurs, such as PayThunder, have accompanied the development of Coinffeine as a company and have helped us with feedback to outline Coinffeine’s future. A future that we believe is viewed as very promising by many.

One of the mentors of Finnovista Pitch Day was Antonio Herráiz Molina, who currently works as Director of Financial Innovation and Technology at the Instituto de Estudios Bursátiles (IEB) and BBVA (Digital Innovation Bank). Herráiz have said that Coinffeine “will soon become one of the Bitcoin startups of global benchmark. Its decentralized, open and secure technology means it has all the ingredients to become the reference exchange for bitcoins in several countries”.

Coinfeine is in Barcelona these days. The Catalan capital is host to the Mobile World Congress (MWC) and the startup event 4 Years From Now (4YFN), and we have been invited to be part of the ICEX stand in the event.

Without a doubt it is a great opportunity to attract new attention for our distributed Bitcoin exchange in front of a national and international audience that visits the capital of mobile phones these days. Coinffiene is proud to be one of the few Spanish Bitcoin companies that participates, and we have got attention for the possible union between banks and Bitcoin that our protocol makes possible. When it was made public that the large Spanish bank Bankinter is our partner, nobody will be surprised that we are working for other Spanish banks to do similar agreements.

We started off the fair last Monday with a workshop about Bitcoin in the 4YFN program. Together with Jorge Ordovás, from Foro de Economía Digital and José Ramón Morales, from Garrigues, our CEO Alberto carried out a workshop called “Bitcoin, the next (r)evolution”. The workshop wanted to transmit a simple message: Bitcoin exists because we need a something similar to cash on the Internet. The interest for the workshop exceeded our expectations and it was one of the 9 that was fully booked before the fair started. After a small game with paper wallets and a talk about new payment systems like the VISA card rechargeable with bitcoins from Xapo, we used the occasion to explain and show how Coinffeine works. And once again, we could confirm it did not disappoint.

During the rest of the first day our stand was full of activity. Being a reference for Bitcoin startups in Spain, we received visits from all kind of people that kept us busy practically all the time. Most of our visitors wanted to meet the team behind one of the most talked startups these days. And the second day we had the same experience.

So if you happen to be in Barcelona come and visit our stand! Get to know how Coinffeine works and how our business plan includes banks in the Bitcoin ecosystem. We are thrilled to share our experiences.

A decentralized system is one in which the control or the essential parts of the system are transferred to the peripheral cores. In this way, the whole system does not depend on single points of failure to operate.

This concept is not new. Already in 2002 the paper of Petar Maymounkov and David Mazières, which would create the protocol for P2P file sharing Kademlia, explained what technical problems were solved and why it makes sense on the Internet. However, it was not until 2009 that they began to explore the mechanisms of consensus and incentives applied to decentralized systems to replace the trusted authorities. This work resulted, among other things, in the technology we know as Blockchain.

Decentralization is a concept that has become fashionable and has solved many technical problems, but few understand the business problems it also solves. Some of the Bitcoin ecosystem startups have created admirable technologies, but that do not solve problems that anyone are willing to pay for. Others are aimed at too small markets where it is difficult to create solid business models, specially if they are based on volume. Being aware of this Coinffeine, with its technology and business model, has chosen a different path.

Coinffeine has created a protocol for exchanging currencies and bitcoins between people in a secure way, using payment processors to manage payments. In the future we also intend to allow exchanges between other digital assets: next generation financial products. We understand that this is the most natural way to exchange digital assets for money, an opinion shared by regulators and experts that we have been in contact with. In this way, instead of creating a new scenario that needs to be regulated, we reuse the existing infrastructure, creating synergies with financial players on the road.

By using Coinffeine, one of the benefits is that the assets traded are always under your control. You do not need to grant us their custody at any point in the process. This means that you never have to worry about news that an Exchange has been hacked or robbed. By doing an exchange with Coinffeine, you will simply never run that risk.

Another big benefit of our technology is that it is not necessary to provide personal information. Think in Coinffeine as a tool such as BitTorrent. You download it, install it and use it. Everything keeps between you and your partner. In this regard, it is noteworthy that the payment processor you use cannot relate payments between users with operations made outside the platform.

Finally, the P2P model allows reducing operating costs of the company: since it does not withstand deposits, it is presumably not considered an MSB.

Coinffeine manages to combine the resolution of various business problems through their protocol. These problems have been solved as a consequence of what the Coinffeine protocol offers: to convert the services traditionally offered by a service provider into contracts between individuals.

In following articles I will explain the tax advantages, the operational advantages and the reduction of costs by involving contracts between individuals and also the problems that Coinffeine solves in traditional banking.

We are now back from New York, and our journey has been full of interesting encounters in which we could re-confirm the great interest Coinffeine awakes in the USA. During these days we were also pleased to see the interest from NY venture capital to know more about our protocol.

In a way it is not a surprise. Even if Coinffeine was born as a market to buy and sell bitcoins in a distributed way, its potential to become the first decentralized market for financial products has also attracted interest on Wall Street.

During the first days of our stay, Alberto attended the market accelerator program organized by VentureOutNY. There we had the opportunity to participate in an attractive Investor Round Robin with the leading venture capital funds of the city. In addition, we attempted to get the most out of the inspiring work sessions and workshops we were attending. We got to learn a lot about the reality of this enchanting city, essential stepping-stone in the world of Fintech.

After these first intense days, we made our own schedule. The up front work to organize meetings that we did not want to miss was very useful, but once there we had to rearrange our schedule to accommodate many more.

As we like to do whenever we travel to a new city, we prioritized meetings with the local Bitcoin community. We were able to meet almost the entire Bitcoin industry based in New York, which is something that serves as inspiration, learning and always motivates new synergies.

Being in the Big Apple as a Bitcoin start-up, the BitLicense is an inevitable and recurring theme. Coinffeine were interested in getting first-hand knowledge of the entire process and therefore we organized meetings with the regulators. We hope that by properly understanding the vision of the regulators in NY, it will allow us to move forward with political parties and experts on the regulation of Bitcoin in Spain.

Back in Madrid, we bring all this learning, stimulating encounters and valuable contacts. Most importantly, however, we are more eager than ever that Coinffeine continues this path. A path that we are building step by step.

Definitely, it has been a new breath of inspiration that will motivate us to continue programming.

We begin 2015 crossing the Atlantic Ocean again. This time Coinffeine‘s destination is New York, where we will participate in a market accelerator program organized by VentureOutNY.

From January 10th and for the next ten days, our CEO Alberto will be in the Big Apple, a city that serves as an important stepping stone in the world of Fintech. The timing for this trip could not be better for Coinffeine. We are working to close the investments of our Serie A, and Manhattan may just be the perfect place to attract interest from new investors. It is a great opportunity to show the potential of Coinffeine´s protocol as a framework for traditional banking and the future that Bitcoin brings to the world of finance and financial institutions.

On our recent trip to San Francisco we learnt, among many other things, how to move in the US market. Coinffeine will use all the experiences from our last trip to increase our network in the US and seek to extend our funding.

The VentureOutNY program will present us to acceleration programs and venture investors in the city, as well as the training required to meet the specific market characteristics of New York through workshops and networking.

New York is known as the city that never sleeps, and it seems like Alberto have to conform to that. It will be a trip with a busy schedule of meetings with investors, banks and Bitcoin ecosystem companies. We also hope to have meetings with the local Bitcoin community in order to deepen their reality, share experiences and create synergies.

Again, we are proud to participate in this programme. It is surely an incredible experience for a Spanish Bitcoin startup. We hope the Big Apple is where Coinffeine gets the momentum to break into the American market.

A few months ago we were selected by the Spain Tech Center (STC), as one of twelve Spanish companies with the greatest growth potential, to participate in the Immersion Program in Silicon Valley. This pioneer program aims to strenghten internationalization of Spanish tech companies by organizing a trip to Silicon Valley, the global epicenter of innovation and technology.

It is undeniable that Bitcoin has made its mark in this Californian valley, so to Coinffeine this has been a great opportunity that we wanted to get the most out of as possible.

Alberto, our CEO, stuffed his suitcase with the motivation that characterizes him and a strong desire to learn from this experience. When he touched the ground on Monday 10th of November, there was not even time for jet lag. Ahead he had two weeks with an intense and busy schedule: mentoring sessions, workshops, company visits and presentations to international investors.

So far, leading companies in the Bitcoin ecosystem, such as Ripple Inc, have been able to learn about Coinffeine. We have also had the opportunity to introduce our company to respected investors, VC´s, corporate venture partners and Angels. Spain Tech Center, RocketSpace, Silicon Valley Forum and the California Spain Chamber of Commerce have been some of the scenarios in which Alberto has been sharing experiences and had inspiring and productive conversations.

During these days, the feeling of empathy with fellow bitcoiners has been constant. Before our departure for Spain, we made a firm proposition to establish contact with the Bitcoin community in San Francisco. We have, without a doubt, felt more included than we ever could have imagined. Many important Bitcoin companies wanted to know more about us, and one of Alberto’s most successful pitches was one that he improvised in a Bitcoin meetup. The attendants understood the tremendous effort that has gone into developing such a technology in a country where entrepreneurship is not easy, and where the national banks are considered among the most important in the world.

The news of Bankinter’s investment in Coinfeine was made public during our stay, and has been a key element to make us noticed. We are proud to have managed to transmit our firm belief that the technology we are developing is a perfect bridge between the banks and the Bitcoin ecosystem, and that we are creating a product that is satisfying to both sides.

Another goal we have accopmplished was to meet with payment processors and banks such as Bank of America and Standard Chartered Bank. Our main intention with these meetings was to learn more about their needs and interests, in order to offer better services to our actual partners in the future.

Back in Madrid, Alberto brings back a suitcase bursting with even more motivation to make Coinffeine grow and tonnes of new knowledge. It has been an unique experience sprung out of breathing San Francisco’s air of innovation.

A breath of fresh air that will undoubtedly help us to continue programming.